Mitt Romney has said that his preferred way of dealing with that community is "self deportation." And Canadian governments have never recognized its existence:

With the most fundamental demographic shift of our lifetimes
unfolding before their eyes, successive Canadian governments have
blissfully continued traditional relations on traditional matters based
on a United States that no longer exists.

There is no evidence that foreign affairs has paid anything more than lip service to the Hispanic explosion
south of the border, a cultural and business transformation happening
outside the doors of our consulates and embassies, with Canada as
spectator.

And that willful ignorance comes at a cost:

By not reaching out to the new Hispanic U.S., Canada is unable to bring its message to this demographic group.

It loses out on tourism, it falls behind on attracting both skilled
Hispanic immigrants and temporary foreign workers who pick fruit, work
in hotels and, yes, meat packing plants, doing jobs Canadians are
unwilling to take.

It means we are missing niche trade and business opportunities
because Hispanic buying habits and preferences are different than
African Americans.

It means we are not crafting environmental policy that will conform
with a segment of the U.S. population which, polling shows, is more
protective of the natural environment than Americans as a whole, whether
because they are working in environmentally threatening environments or
live in areas that are more likely to be fouled by industry.

And it means we are losing the battle for attention from U.S.
political and business elites who routinely vacation in Caribbean and
Latin American locales where the potential photo-ops are better for
business and re-election prospects.

One suspects that the Harper government -- whose neglect of Quebec suggests that it still has trouble with French on the back of Corn Flakes boxes -- doesn't know what the word Hispanic means. They would do well to read the Washington Post's Richard Cohen, who recently observed that "Hispanic is not Spanish for stupid."

Anyone who ignores Spanish speaking Americans, or hopes they will simply go away, is just that -- stupid.

8 comments:

The interesting thing about this demographic shift is that unlike the French community, the Hispanic one is little concerned with compelling people to speak spanish. And yet, (ironically?) their language and culture continues to be stronger than ever.

I was on my bike, in southern California, heading for the border crossing at Tecate 60-miles due south when I stopped to grab lunch at a Burger King. Inside it looked like any other fast food burger joint in the States. Only the staff were all Hispanic and spoke little, if any, English. It was then I realized they were truly reclaiming the lands that were seized from them more than a century earlier.

A few Republicans have become alarmed at the demographic tsunami that's bearing down on the GOP across the southwest but the party won't change out of fear of alienating its angry old white man base. It's a truly self-defeating posture but they've painted themselves into a corner and none has the guts to take on someone like Jan Brewer. Rot in Hell, dirtbags!

I have never thought of the Hispanic population in these terms, as a economic source for Canada. I have been very interested in their increasing numbers and their cultural transformation of the United States.They are a unique immigrant group. They will not just blend into becoming "an American" in the cultural melting pot. There numbers are so large and culture so rich they will can resist just disappearing like so many before; ie Germans, and French Canadians. Many also do not see the South western United States as foreign territory. It used to be part of Mexico and it seems Mexicans still have an emotional tie to it as part of "Greater Mexico." I have also written to my American friends that the United States will become a bilingual country. already large parts of it are de facto bilingual. Rather than embracing this reality many Americans are resisting it with such laws as making English the official language of their State not to mention trying to limit the numbers of Central Americans (not all Spanish speakers are treated equal. The Cubans have preferred status).The transformation of the United States will become nastier before it gets better. For the sensible among them they would do well to look to Canada as a model of how to deal with bilingual and multicultural realities.

Canada needs to do a lot more interaction with Central and South Americans where possible distancing ourselves from the United States influence in those countries.

Philip is right about the Hispanic resistance to assimilation. I suspect that has many causes including access to education. Yet, as you travel just a few hundred miles south of the Rio Grande, English-language speakers seem practically non-existent. Given that the Mexican people live next door to the Americans and are able to access U.S. television you might think that culture spread would be unstoppable.

Will this lead to violence? The election of Obama revealed the ugly truth of just how prevalent racism remains in the States. It's as though the gloves came off for bigotry.

Many Americans have a deepset notion that theirs is a white, Christian, English-speaking country, the sort that sees nothing wrong in Manifest Destiny, the Bush Doctrine and American Exceptionalism. Once you're steeped in those sorts of values, it's easy to become a Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich or John Bolton. It's easy to justify violence as fulfillment of a duty to defend nd uphold these notions.

About Me

A retired English teacher, I now write about public policy and, occasionally, personal experience. I leave it to the reader to determine if I practice what I preached to my students for thirty-two years.